Who would possibly want to make a movie about a rogue journalist-turned-murder investigator and a bad-ass goth chick/computer hacker/rape victim who extracts revenge on her assailant by carving epithets into his chest?
If the movie was to be based on Stieg Larsson's wildly popular global smash novel "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," then the answer is "Hollywood," of course. And interestingly, director David Fincher's version of "Dragon Tattoo" is (already) version #2 of Larsson's story to appear on the silver screen (a capable Swedish rendition of the entire trilogy having already been completed in Norse country and released globally on dvd).
Fincher kicks off the film with a bang, featuring an opening credit sequence that plays like James Bond-meets-David Cronenberg, with an inspired interpretation of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" (is that really Trent Reznor helming the soundtrack?) as sonic backdrop. In short order, we meet beleaguered "Millennium" magazine news man Mikael Blomkvist (a twitchy Daniel Craig) and black-clad hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara, who is mesmerizing), whose paths cross after a wealthy retired Swedish industrialist named Vanger (Christopher Plummer) hires Blomkvist to come camp out on his family island compound - in weather that is most foul, frigid, blustery, raw, and white - and investigate a missing family member whose forty year trail has gone cold. Salander, meanwhile, must contend with a Swedish state wardservant-cum-sexual predator who uses his control over her finances to extract perverse sexual favors. How Blomkvist and Salander's story plays out, I won't spoil for you here - no surprises, if you'd read the book.
Larsson tackles big themes in his story: privacy, family secrets, abusive corporate power (fascism, even), patriarchal society's violence against women (and an anti-heroine's revenge), the corruption of the state. Fincher's Hollywood script geekily garners heaps more product placement (Apple, Google, Wikipedia) and hews more closely to Larsson's novel than the Swedish film version, weaving skillfully between Blomkvist and Salander's unfolding stories. While the film doesn't probe into the thoughts and motivations of its characters, it does deliver a compelling story - readers of "Dragon Tattoo" will no doubt be presently surprised.